In this fourth episode of the second season of Chemins, we welcome Jean-Christophe Boulanger, president and co-founder of Contexte, an independent online media outlet serving politics professionals in France and Europe. For ten years, Contexte has been developing an editorial and economic model centered on subscriptions. How do you go from 0 to 80 employees? From one to eight thematic editions? How do you grow in a healthy and sustainable way while becoming an expert in your field?
Key points:
Contexte reaches 12,000 paying subscribers today on a target market of around 50,000 people. Yet Contexte remains relatively unknown to the general public.
« We're a professional media outlet, that's not our calling. Our goal is to be known by those 50,000 people who make up our target audience, not by all 70 million people in France. »
The media outlet has been profitable for five years, which allows it to invest in new editions and new products. Its growth has been around 50% per year for the past three years.
« At first, it took quite a while. It took us four years to reach 1 million euros in subscription revenue, today we're at 8 million and it's accelerating significantly. »
Contexte is now in its third acceleration phase.
« The first phase happened when we started at seven, up until we reached twenty people. We were a tight-knit small collective where everyone understood where we wanted to go without needing to structure things too much. From 25-30 people, that was no longer possible. Roles changed, became specialized, and not everyone had a good understanding of what each person was doing. Today, we're at 100 people. From 70 onwards, that's a third stage. The structure is even stronger. What enabled this acceleration was our investment in the editorial team. We also invested in the commercial and marketing side. That explains a lot about the growth in subscription revenues. »
To build a well-functioning media outlet, it's important to invest in both good journalists and good business professionals.
« If you do just one or just the other, it's complicated. Good content doesn't sell itself. »
1300 organisations are today subscribed to Contexte. The media outlet sold its subscriptions one by one.
« About two-thirds of our organizations come from the private sector—companies, professional associations, consulting firms. The other third from the public sector: government agencies, local authorities, ministries in France and abroad. Customer acquisition often starts with someone who finds a Contexte article on Twitter and has to enter their email to read it free for fifteen days. Otherwise, the content is behind a paywall. Every day, we get dozens to hundreds of people giving us their information to access content. Our teams qualify these leads: where do they work? Are they likely to subscribe? Then we identify who the decision-maker is in their organization and what price point works. After that, we focus on retention and getting our subscribers to use our products more. »
Subscription prices range from 1,000 euros for a small NGO or media outlet to 150,000 euros for a CAC 40 company or public institution with several hundred subscribers. With an average subscription of 6,000 euros per year.
Contexte currently has eight sections, half of which are profitable. The goal? To cover as many business sectors as possible in order to provide useful information for political professionals. Their digital edition will soon be strengthened in November 2023 by doubling the number of journalists and splitting it into two: tech and media.
« Our selection is based on requests from our subscribers, on our perception of sectors where regulation has a strong impact, and on a sector's momentum. A new edition represents roughly 800,000 euros of investment for 4 or 5 journalists, 2 or 3 people in sales or marketing, and a few part-time roles in tech, HR, finance, and support. So 8 or 9 people total, with profitability that can take up to five years to achieve. »
Contexte's management team holds 98% of the company's capital. This limits the need for fundraising rounds. The media outlet has also received approximately 6 million euros in subsidies in total.
Journalists can change sectors if they feel the need to.
« One of the problems with specialized press is becoming entrenched. By focusing narrowly on your beat for ten years, you lose perspective. We don't force change but we encourage it. With each new edition, journalists move to different sections. »
The media outlet is the first in France to have published its journalists' conflict of interest declarations and also publishes its financial accounts.
« If a journalist has a membership in a political party or donates to an NGO, readers will be informed. We also have an ethics charter that goes far in separating editorial and commercial operations. This contributes to the value of our product. »
On the management side, Contexte has opened an internal group that works on work-related stress.
« We're considering having a news-free day, where once a week journalists wouldn't be following daily news but could focus on in-depth investigations. We're also working to validate their feelings with regular surveys to identify moments of tension, or tensions in certain teams. We also believe that management is a job in itself and that every manager must be trained in these areas. For the past year and a half we've had managers dedicated solely to their management function. They don't produce content.
«We often see management as a career progression to earn more money, without genuinely wanting to perform the role. That's not how we do things. We created a salary grid to avoid that effect. The downside is that it's hard to attract good managers without good salaries.»
To go further
- Find all episodes of season 2 of our Chemins podcast dedicated to accelerating a media project, featuring Cécile Sourd (Mediapart), Jean-Christophe Boulanger (Contexte), Lauren Boudard (Climax), Frédéric Desiles (Alternatives Économiques), Emmanuelle Josse (La Déferlante) and Valentin Levetti (Stupid Economics).
- On the management question, listen to the Chemins episode with Cécile Sourd, editor-in-chief of the independent online newspaper Mediapart.
- Marsactu, Contexte, The Markup, read our article on transparency issues in media and on the importance of acknowledging mistakes with cases from the Monde, Arrêt sur images and the New York Times.
